|
|
|
If you’re a busy entrepreneur laser-focused on the success of your business, happiness might seem like, if not an afterthought, then at least a secondary concern. It’s tempting to think that once you’ve got your business humming along, then you can turn to emotional well-being.
But if that’s how you think, boy do I have a study to show you.
It’s massive (looking at nearly one million people), conducted by some of the biggest names in positive psychology, and crystal clear in its conclusions: Being happier dramatically increases your chances of success at work. So next time you’re tempted to push pursuing happiness into the future, remind yourself the latest science says happiness brings success and not the other way around.
Case closed: Happier workers are more successful workers.
The research, which recently appeared in the Journal of Happiness Studies (yes, this really exists) and was summed up by its authors in an MIT Sloan Management Review article, starts from a simple question. What comes first, success or happiness? Does being successful make you happy or does being happy make you successful?
To find out, the team–Paul Lester, Ed Diener, and Martin Seligman (who is often dubbed “the father of positive psychology“)–set out to collect a huge amount of data. To do so they looked to the world’s largest employer: the military. The researchers worked with the U.S. Army to follow nearly one million soldiers over five years, measuring both their well-being upon entering the army and their performance over time.
The results surprised even a team who has devoted much of their careers to the proposition that happiness is worth studying and promoting.
“While we expected that well-being and optimism would matter to performance, we were taken aback by just how much they mattered. We saw four times as many awards earned by the initially happiest soldiers (upper quartile) compared with those who were un- happiest initially (lower quartile)–a huge difference in performance between those groups. This gap held when we accounted for status (officers versus enlisted soldiers), gender, race, education, and other demographic characteristics,” the researchers write in the MIT article.
The stress of the pandemic has taken a toll on everyone’s mental health.
If you’re stressed out, anxious, and unhappy, how much does it impact your ability to be successful in life?
Can you fake it till you make it?
|
